Item Description
Letter, May 12, 1869, Lardner Gibbon, Greenville, South Carolina, to Ellen Call Long, 4 pp., written entirely in rhyming couplets: ''My dear Mrs. Long, Are you not very wrong / To keep your friends in such ignorance, And always writing in one's defence / You told us some time ago, To Italy you might go / As we did not hear from you, We thought it might be too true / Therefore I held my mouth, And did not write down South / . . . For a house in town we are negotiating, In which we may pass our future fate in / . . . The present owner says there is excellent water, We hope when the time arrives you will bring your daughter / . . . I have grown old, gray and morose, And quite as wrinkled as my neighbor Mrs. Grose /. . . Mankind seems to fancy revolution fighting, I would rather take my carpetbag and go a-kiting / Your Father saw far beyond us all, He predicted a dreadful trial, and fall / I often think of him, and you, As neighbors, and friends, good, and true / Now we have no such social conversation, We are cast away from friend and relation / We hope you will not let us pass forever, Whether you write or not, our friendship you cannot sever . . .''
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